What are WOODCHIPS and what are THEIR IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT?

Question

What are the iissues of woodchips on the environment?

Answer 1

Woodchips are devastating to the environment. They would be fairly benign if, as other answerers have stated, they were made from timber waste, but that's not how they're produced.

In Australia and I believe in many other countries, tens of thousands of hectares of old growth forests are clear felled every year to make woodchips - NOTHING is left standing. All of the solid timber and some of the rubbish is chipped and everything else is put into huge piles and burnt. We're not talking here about a few tonnes of woodchips for people to use on their gardens as mulch. Those may well be made from offcuts and waste timber but the quantity is insignificant in terms of the overall quantities of woodchips produced in the world each year. No, it's the millions of tonnes that are sent to pulp mills for paper manufacture that we should all be concerned about. The effects on the local environment are devastating as wildlife habitat is destroyed and bio-diversity is lost forever. In Australia, the cleared areas are usually replanted with introduced mono-culture (km upon km of the same variety of tree) softwoods for future paper production and are completely useless to our local wildlife. And in a global sense, it's easy to see that the effects on the  environment are also severe as massive carbon sinks are removed and carbon is released into the atmosphere.

Answer 2

THey are chopped up trees and wood and are compost before any harm is done

Answer 3

Wood chips are more than the wood chips people have on their gardens which usually have little environmental impact as they are usually from waste or  trees which need to be removed for some good reason.

The wood chip industry which supplies paper manufacturers is different.  Whole areas of forest are cut down to be made into small wood chips as the first step in paper manufacture.

If the wood chipping is done in old growth forests there is considerable environmental damage. Slowly growing old trees which take decades to centuries to replace are destroyed. The creatures that inhabit that forest have their habitat destroyed. There is loss of the anti pollution benefits of expanses of forests. If it is done in plantation forests where trees such as fast growing pines are planted there is less environmental impact. These plantations are considered a renewable resource as they can be regrown fairly quickly (comparative to old growth forests). Both methods suffer from another major environmental impact. There is significant burning off of waste.

In places where wood chipping is a big industry such as Tasmania in Australia there is wide public anger at the industry although some support the industry because of the jobs it creates.

The biggest source of pollution and environmental damage from wood chipping of  plantation forests is not in the wood chipping itself but in the damage to the environment from the associated paper mills.

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_pollu...

This will give you more information.

Answer 4

Wood chips are made from the waste that is left from trees that have been cut down. It is used to provide mulch for plantings around your home businesses ect! It helps inhibit the growth of unwanted plants. As it breaks down it provides food for the plants it is used to protect. It is best to use three to four inches of it, Replace it as needed every two or three years. I prefer ceder or cypress myself. But there are many different types available!

Answer 5

Kindly make yourself known to all,  from where, who & time zone.e.g. my:

OLD/M from S'pore --Time: 1815 on 10/7/08 (Thurs)

Woodchips by nature, decay peel and fell off from trees.  By machine cut into chips to make chipboard for furniture making, etc.  In country of lumbering and exporting of wood like Canada, Thailand, Malaysia & Indonesia -- there are sawmills to cut tree- trunk into plank and pack in stack for export or local uses.

The saw-dust from sawmills will be an environmental problem , if burnt--cause polution to the air, by dumping -- cause land waste if not done at proper places.  But in East Malaysia, Borneo  -- the saw-dust were mixed with clay and mud and turn into bricks for construction i.e. from waste to useful materials so save environment.

Just think and do the R&D to get it.....IT ---don't know what ? Just wait & SEE.. .

Answer 6

They're small chips of wood.  There don't have to be any particular environmental issues.  That would depend upon which supplies of wood they come from, how they're manufactured and what's then done with them.

My small patch of front garden soil has been partly covered with woodchips for the last few years, and nobody's complained about their impact yet.  The intended purpose is, in this case, to discourage weeds by covering the soil.  I'll let you know if that changes over the course of time.

Answer 7

Wood-chips are the remains of what use to be trees or stocks of wood.  There really is no issue environmentally because they are biodegradable, however if people are cutting down trees to get the wood chips that can become an issue to the environment.